All posts tagged: interior design

Mood Board Pink Interiors

In The Pink – Is there a better way to end 2020 than some pink interiors?

Well it seems I have done all my Christmas wrapping and have a bit of time to share some pink interiors to end this year, what a rosey treat! Let’s start with this room: Before – sales listing This will soon be the guest bedroom on the top floor of a lovely big Victorian house in Ilkley. You can probably fathom it was a teenage bedroom, and whilst it looks in half decent nick, the room was tired and needed stripping back and starting again. Carpets up, fitted wardrobe removed, walls stripped, and re-skimmed and floorboards sanded and re-stained. And of course I had to choose a ‘new outfit’ for it to wear too. During the big rip out, carpets up, floorboards revealed and room ready to be stripped before being re-skimmed Working around the client’s existing metal bed and two pine bedsides, I went for a slightly bonkers, yet Scandi take on a traditional Victorian striped wallpaper. The stripes giving a gentle nod to the Victorian style bed frame but the scale and colour …

3 bed semi extension

The 3 Bed Semi Extension – The Site Visit

Hello everyone, how are you all doing? It’s been a while since I last posted, for lots of reasons I won’t go into today, let’s just say there’s been a lot of (a bit too much) “life stuff” going on. Alongside that, i’ve been rolling along with three of my five live projects and wanted to share the progress we’ve made on the 3 bed semi extension over in North Yorkshire. It’s the one i’ve been working on remotely since the end of last year. The Ground Floor Plan Since January the whole house has been getting ripped out, extended and remodelled and as the property is empty, most of the works have luckily continued (albeit a little slower) throughout lockdown. My suggestion to totally change the ground floor layout was given the thumbs up and has now been realised. And it’s looking pretty good. I made my very first visit to the property yesterday and took lots of in-progress pics to share with you. Let me walk you around… Before The previous homeowners had …

The Snug - Rebel Walls

The Snug – Final Reveal – in collaboration with Rebel Walls

Hello again you lovely lot, I’m back again with another final reveal post of a project I began work on last July. Do you remember the snug? You can read the introduction to this project here. For those that can’t be arsed clicking back, let me remind you… The TV/Playroom is split on two levels, two thirds being down two small steps where the sofa and TV was. The top third being a walkway from the kitchen to the back door and another door into the integral garage. Originally this space was used as a playroom but as the kiddos had since outgrown the need for dedicated play space, it was time to turn the room into the family friendly but grown-up snug. And when I say grown up, I mean it has direct access to alcoholic beverages. It wasn’t a complete redesign by any means as I had to work around the items that were staying; a white, leather corner sofa, old trunk/coffee table, white UPVC French doors and the rich coloured, oak floor.  Sometimes this …

Georgian Apartment

The Georgian Apartment – New Project Time

Time to introduce you to a new project today. It’s a two bedroom apartment situated inside what was once one of the many impressive mansions built in Leeds, 300 years ago. This Georgian property certainly has the scale and proportion you would expect from this period. Just looking at this photo from the recent sales listing, you can see there is a real gem waiting to be loved, revived and restored. The new homeowner is VERY keen to get the works done as quickly as possible, understandably. But as ever, i’ve had to put the brakes on a little in order to give this special building what it deserves. Because, whoever fitted this kitchen was clearly high on solvents: Who on earth would fit a blue formica kitchen in a Georgian mansion? Definitely someone from the late 80’s early 90’s me thinks…. Here’s the apartment’s original floorplan to give you an idea of what rooms and spaces we are working with and how they all relate: As you can see, the floorplan suggests there would have …

vine bleu

The Vine Bleu Room – A Remote Design Project

Today is a special post for me. I’m sharing some before and afters of a remote design project I worked on at the end of 2018.  The homeowners had moved into a new family home, but not your average property, their new pad formed part of a Grade 2 listed Arts & Crafts mansion, designed by the architect George Morley Eaton, a follower of Sir Edwin Lutyens. As you would expect, architecturally, it’s stunning. However, one room in particular left them feeling somewhat overwhelmed; The Drawing Room. Estate Agent Photo Here’s how the room looked when it was sold. As you can see, it’s a huge at over 5m by 7m. With rooms like this, you don’t need to work too hard to make it look amazing. But what you do need to do is know how to use Scale and Proportion.  You can’t put an average sized sofa, rug or ceiling light into a room like this, you’ve got to supersize everything so it matches up to that fireplace, the beams, those door frames…. …

wall lights

Planning a build? When do I get an interior designer on board?

I’ve always hated the job title, interior designer, most people still don’t really know what we actually do, but as i’ve mentioned before, paint colours and cushions really are about 0.6%. Cushions in the Upper Brook Street Project I’ve noticed more interior designers referring to themselves as ‘interior architects’. I can’t class myself as that by any means, i’m certainly no architect, but I do make decisions around spatial planning, flow, lighting plans, first fix wiring and plumbing… Here’s what Google has to say about Interior Architecture V’s Interior Design: Interior architecture is the balancing of the art and science of designing an interior space taking into account all elements of the build.  Interior design is a broad ranging profession taking into account all aspects of planning and designing interior spaces in the built environment. I kind of see myself as being somewhere in between the two. One of the things I get BIG kicks from is solving layout problems. It might be as simple repositioning a dining table so it runs lengthways instead of horizontally, …

An Introduction to Project: Bedroom 4

I’m back with a new project to share with you guys this week, at a property you will have probably seen before a fair few times. The Drawing Room – December 2016 Directly above this room is this room: Upper Brook Street Project – May 2017 And directly above this room is this room: Yes, we’re now onto the top floor of this Edwardian home. The homeowners are tackling bedroom four and five, plus what will become the main family bathroom, with a bit of help from me again. Be rude not to eh? Bedroom five, as shown on the floorplan below is kind of done, except for lighting, window dressing and the final faff. So i’ve been asked to help with the finishing touches for that space. More on that room coming in another blog post soon. For today i’m focusing on bedroom four as that space has proved to be slightly more tricky to sort. It’s pretty large but there are plenty of angles in this space with the ceiling being pitched on …

Making Spaces UK Interior Design Blog

How did I get into Interior Design?

I get a couple of emails a month from people that might have found me via a blog post or an Instagram pic, asking me how I got started. How did I set up Making Spaces with no formal qualifications in design? And in my head, I just kind of go, erm… I just built a website and got started…. but then I have a proper think and find myself asking the same question. One Year Later, October 2015 “I’ve never had “a job”. The concept of “a job” scares the shit out of me. I’ve always been self-employed and been my own boss and worked myself hard. But having the freedom to make creative decisions is something I hold very dear. In fact it’s my air. I genuinely admire people such as my OH that can commit to a full time job, working for someone else. I tried to convince myself that I could do it too, get a sales job in an interiors shop or something, but if i’m honest with myself, I was just …

Equations and Balance

I’m asked a lot of similar questions during a consultation including things like: What colour would you put on the walls? What kind of light fitting? Where will I hang this piece of art? Which is what you’d expect I guess. During the initial consultation I can give some rough ideas as to what, where and why but I can’t say 100% until i’ve pieced together the whole room. Putting a room together is an equation. Or a recipe. Take out a pinch of that and you need to add a touch of this in order to balance everything out. Make sense? For a new project, I always begin by Pinning ideas to a board; overall room concepts, products, surface coverings and some of the more pedestrian stuff like fixtures and fittings. More often than not, I’ll Pin several choices for each item to give the client some wiggle room with the design. That’s the beauty of client-led design, they’re as much as responsible for the room as you are really, we’re just there guiding …

Can you put a price on creativity?

In short, no. No you can’t. But as creative people, we have to, in order to make a living. An artist charges £500 for a painting perhaps, which sounds a lot doesn’t it? But then when you find out it took them a week to create it and cost them £70 in materials (canvas, brushes, paints….) £430 for 40 hours work doesn’t quite sound as good does it? That’s £10.75 p/hr by the way. For someone that’s maybe got a BA in fine art. And 40 hours is always 60 hours, because any creative person starts work as soon as they get out of bed and doesn’t switch off until the lights are out. Even then, the brain continues to whirr and race with ideas. I have been known to solve design dilemmas in my dreams. So even when i’m asleep, i’m working. That’s kind of annoying. But what happens when you work in a service industry and the service you provide isn’t tangible? When the service you provide is a long and lengthy process …